I was following up with a few people that I had attended my 2-day corporate training workshop on Agile Project Management with Scrum. A discussion came up regarding writing personal self-reflection for annual performance and how that is aligned with Scrum. I view Scrum as an opportunity for the team to ask powerful questions. So, I felt like the team resonated reasonably in asking whether the performance review process fitted within a Scrum process.
However, Scrum is also a collection of cross-functional teams with a working agreement experimenting with value creation and delivery. Such a focused value creation also means there are other organizational commitments like capacity planning, transition planning, and succession planning based on sensing the external and market conditions, legal and regulatory compliance, etc. Within the Human Resources and Employment considerations, several confidentiality requirements exist that are not part of the transparency consideration of Scrum. So, performance assessment for individuals' career growth based on the personal development plan is required and doesn't fit within the Scrum (or Agile, Project Management) considerations.
The discussion followed further into guidelines on self-promotion in the performance review. Now, based on my experience managing the PMO, I gave some suggestions as follows.
Any self-promotion should be objective and not be blowing the horn so much that it emphasizes no opportunity for continuous improvement. In fact, the more modest one is in stating the facts, the better the others will blow your horn! I feel that self-promotion should focus on perspective thoughts, purposeful actions, projection of behaviors that can be emulated, and the poise one takes on maintaining emotional connections.
- For instance, the thoughts should not only focus on short term deliverable orientation but also long-term scalability. So, talking about how the definition of done was adhered to alone is not sufficient. Instead, the types of documentation created, training promoted, operational excellence addressed, risks treated, and technical debt minimized are all examples of bringing industry practices. Everyone can start thinking in terms of the functions adjacent to their roles and responsibilities and see how they are better off because of their work.
- Now, this perspective can also focus on motives that connect with the larger organizational goals. For instance, connecting with upstream value stream activities and evaluate how multiple departments outside of our core work could be benefitting or what organizational processes can be better modified and incorporated are creative and systemic activities. Inviting other business unit leaders to talk about their daily challenges and what we can do to address these challenges builds bridges.
- Combined with perspectives and purpose is the behaviors that we would like others to follow. Here is where 'influence' comes in as we model leadership behaviors (Northouse, 2007). Engaging in powerful questions, becoming a mentor, advisor, or coach, and taking on stretch goals beyond what our job responsibilities call for making us allies for other business and trustworthy comrades for others. As you can see, we are projecting our leadership image.
- Losing connection to the people's emotion is a downward spiraling path even if we do all the above correctly. Here is where we go back to applying the emotional intelligence, multiple intelligence, and cultural intelligence that differentiate us further.
How can we practice frequently all the above perspectives, purpose, projection, and poise? The best way to address them is, as I always say, "Don't count the days but make the days count." Consistency is the key to continuously grooming oneself in all these areas so that when it comes to writing this annual reflection, it is a simple consolidation activity. My approaches to doing this consistency are as follows:
- Use a calendar system effectively to manage yourself. It may be challenging with our multiple roles (worker, parent, student, social commitments) that one calendar can't avoid schedule conflicts. So, use a consolidated calendar to manage "all" your commitments. Let the system be your reminder!
- In today’s world, there are several tools available. One can use your project management tools to manage your own career promotion as a project as a product tracking your 1:1 meeting, learning, work objectives, and stretch goals. I used SpiraTeam (Inflectra, n.d.) that I had access to in my company to manage my individual self-agility (Rajagopalan, 2012) and my PMO performance objectives based on balance score card using the system to track my commitments.
- I start every day with "What is a successful today?" Be relentlessly positive and committed to delivering on each day! I am sure a thing or two will slip but recognize it so that you can become better if that is in your control.
- Focus on one or two important things. a) Avoid multitasking please, and create routines that work for you. b) Create value, eliminate non-value activities, reduce stress, raise your awareness. These ideas emerge from Blue Ocean Leadership (Kim & Mauborgne, 2017) where you can think of each day as a fresh start to make a difference.
- Remember to be modest every day! This ensures that others write your performance review each day, week, month to tell the story for your annual performance. If you are not tracking your performance more frequently against the value drivers such as measuring against your commitments or tracked in the balance score card tracking tools, then, your annual performance review should not be a monumental activity!
- Celebrate the wins frequently. In managing the teams, the leadership principles advocate "recognize more". The leadership practices approach even value "recognition" (Kouzes and Posner, 1987) through encouraging the heart more than "reward" (Herzberg, Mausner, Snydermann, 1959) as part of the motivation much needed. So, share the team's wins. Spread your love in the status meetings. Don't wait for the lessons learned to recognize others. Recognizing people for their contribution is a boomerang. It comes back to you with sincere appreciation.
